Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Reagan Youth to Play Fubar: Read Serial Killer Joel Rifkin's Tragic Relationship With the Legendary Band

The legendary punk band Reagan Youth is coming to town. How can a band with a dead singer tour, you ask? Well, Reagan Youth is pulling a Germs and coming to St. Louis' own Fubar on April 23rd to "hate hate" all over the city, despite the fact that lead singer Dave Rubenstein died in 1993 as a direct (and chilling) result of the murders of serial killer Joel Rifkin.

Reagan Youth is one of the original New York hardcore punk bands that played regularly at legendary punk club CBGB's in the '80s. It's hard to run into a punk who doesn't know a few songs off of the "A Collection of Pop Classics" compilation of the band's EPs. American anarcho-punk forefathers known for their far-left politics and fast, noisy but technically skilled hardcore anthems, Reagan Youth only put out two records during their original stint. The band broke up in 1990 after its namesake Ronald Reagan left office.

Reagan Youth was a non-racist band who famously "Hated Hate," but who frequently used racist imagery in order to help drive home the band's point that Reagan was evil. The name of the group is in fact a parody of the "Hitler Youth" of World War II.

Singer Dave "Insurgent" Rubenstein, who had long been battling with heroin addiction, died in 1993 after well-known serial killer Joel Rifkin murdered his girlfriend (who had been prostituting herself to support both of their spiraling habits), Tiffany Bresciani. This was the was last victim Rifkin took before his arrest and trial that ended with a 203 year prison sentence. From Rifkin's Wikipedia entry:

Police finally caught up to Rifkin on June 28, 1993, when state troopers spotted him driving his pickup truck without license plates on the Southern State Parkway. A high-speed chase ended in Mineola, where he crashed into a utility pole directly in front of the courthouse where he eventually stood trial. Troopers detected a foul odor from the back of the truck. It came from the corpse of prostitute and dancer Tiffany Bresciani, 22, the girlfriend of Dave Rubinstein (a.k.a. Dave Insurgent, a member of the 1980s punk band Reagan Youth)